We talk Ember on the desktop, the world debut of Turing School's Javascript curriculum, how to train hordes of highly skilled devs in a brutal 7-month program, and how famous is too famous for Real World Ember.
- Turing School
- Starting a new program to split from the Ruby curriculum- all Javascript, mostly Ember with a bit of React and Node
- Ember AND React in the new curriculum
- React community discovering the need for ember-cli
- Steve Kinney
- Steve is in the suburbs of fame bc of EmberConf speech, but we let him on here anyways
- Okay, famous people are okay too
- In Denver for 18 months
- Moved from New York City to work at Turing School
- He is co-director of academics
- The Original Ruby Curriculum
- 7 months training, which is longer than other code schools
- First 6 weeks focused on fundamentals, algorithms using Ruby
- Second 6-week module teaches Sinatra and Rails
- Third 6-week module is “Real World” Rails, dealing with collaboration, performance, API, etc.
- A big project at the end of third module
- Fourth 6-week module goes deep into Javascript, with a bit of EmberJS
- a lot of stuff packed in there, like websockets
- Want them to learn the low-level stuff so they can know what to do when things go “off the rails"
- Fancy New Javascript Curriculum
- WORLD DEBUT
- 1st module: CSS and Html + Javascript fundamentals
- Responsive design- building your own simple grid system from scratch
- Fundamentals, like in original curriculum, but with Javascript
- 2nd module: A lot like the current 4th module
- Game Time: they build a game with Javascript
- Every cohort builds a more ambitious game than the one before- SkiFree, Rock Band, etc.
- Forces you to think in objects, stop storing stuff in the DOM
- Node + Express for APIs
- Events, localstorage, what is Event Loop, flexbox, scss, functional programming with lodash, etc.
- 3rd module: Professional client-side applications
- build tools, process automation
- JSONAPI
- Javascript Frameworks: teaching the “big two”, Ember and React
- Angular devs: send all hate mail to Jeffrey :)
- In a React app, you’re slowly building a weird poorly-put-together Ember
- In Ember, all the edge cases are sanded down by the community
- Steven would reach for React for simple apps, Ember for complex apps
- Jeffrey does Ember for everything
- Tossing up a quick Ember app is way easier now than it used to be.
- It’s just a static file- you could bring back manual FTP! This is possible.
- 4th module: Javascript outside the browser
- Electron- desktop applications with Ember, they can access file system and OS features
- Huge possibilities, multiple windows, interprocess communication, node + chromium, etc. (but no URLS)
- Like websockets, you didn’t know you needed it until you think about it.
- Electron + web sockets + web workers + localstorage: a total offline experience with EmberJS.
- Getting started is Really Easy (this assertion not fact-checked by Jeffrey, but I trust Steve)
- Great community, including an ember-cli addon.
- Cordova: Native-ish Android and iOS apps
- You can stick stuff on the app store, use native APIs
- React Native
- Graduates will know more than 90% of the market about doing Javascript outside the browser… at graduation!
- All their curriculum is free and open source!
- Students' responses to Ember
- People with Rails experience are mostly confused because the same words mean different things
- Ember: A swarm of Rails apps
- It will probably be easier once they aren’t teaching Rails first
- Often apologizing for the Javascript itself
- Teaching has leveled him up as a developer
- Having to explain something means you have to really understand it
- Steve: 3x the length of lesson to prepare it
- Jeffrey: Very jealous of only 3x. On a very very very good day, 3x time just for recording.
- Confessions about Jeffrey’s first screencast
- first jQuery experience hooked him
- some people love the front-end web experience, others just don't
- Who should apply to Turing School?
- People who want to work really really hard
- “I made a promise to make you hireable. I’m going to keep it."
- Hiring teachers and developers
- 2-3 more instructors to start off new program
- Email steve@turing.io
- Teachers will also work really really hard
- Teaching during the day, lesson planning at night- like K-12 education
- Everyone in the org teaches, including Jeff Casimir (founder)
- DinosaurJS
- One day single-track conference
- Creative things in Javascript
- CFP open now
- Sponsored by EmberScreencasts.com
